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Join us in glorious North Queensland winter weather for a visit to a tiny silver mining town which existed for just a few years in the 1890s. Pocket watch relics, harmonica reeds and old buckles are just a few of the finds. The real ‘prize’ of the outing was an incidental find – a pristine Hamilton Patent ‘torpedo’ soda bottle, manufactured by Ross’s, Belfast, in the 1880s. We hope you enjoy our day out and the excessively lengthy ‘drive-in, drive-out’ sequences. Happy Fossicking everyone! Colleen and Warren. www.nqexplorers.com www.garrettaustralia.com.au www.outdoortactical.com.au

I do not as yet have either of the mono coils for the ATX – only the stock 10″ x 12″ DD. But I am certainly familiar with the advantages of using an 8″ mono. All but one of the nuggets I found while using the Infinium were found with the 8″ mono. Only one was found with the 10″ x 14″ mono (that was partly due to the fact that the 8″ mono was in use most of the time because of the amount of trash at the search site). The Infinium is no slouch when fitted with an 8″ mono. I am impressed with the depth it can reach. The ATX would no doubt punch down even further than the Infinium while using an 8″ mono, and at the same time it would sound off to smaller targets than the Infinium is capable of detecting (of course it can do that even while using the stock DD).

I made a small blunder when quoting the information from J.K. Cossum’s book regarding the Queensland Defence Forces button. All buttons of this type have BOTH a solid back and a drop shank – that applies to all three sizes. So my comment “the buttons came with either a solid back or a drop shank” is incorrect – it is not a matter of “either”/”or” (and apparently there were no hollow back or fast shank varieties, just the one type). Not quite a big enough blunder to threaten the end of the world, but I feel much better now that I have cleared the matter up . . .

It will be good to meet up with you if you make it down to this part of the country sometime soon.

David, as per your usual standard, your comments are comprehensive, entertaining and well composed – Colleen and I really appreciate the time you take on them. Great information on the Queensland Colonial button, it is the ‘large’ variety, and I hadn’t yet determined the maker’s name on the back – but you have cleared that up for me. That will be appearing in a ‘couple of videos’ time.

Your information on the vulcanized stopper is also timely, as just last week I dug my very first intact ‘Lamont’ bottle (from the same dump as the stopper, just deeper down). The bottle is intact but quite ‘crusty’ being the best description, I have it soaking to remove the soil, a very highly mineralzed ironstone clay, perhaps that may affect the glass over 100 years – certainly not as pristine as the Hamilton Torpedo which looked ‘new’ when unearthed – it had never really seen the sun and had been in a sandy well drained soil for all these years. Who knows what else lies out there? That’s why we keep going back (as you yourself would understand).

You are having great success with your ATX – have you tried the little 8″ mono on your patch? The disadvantage there is that you lose the Iron Check, of course.

We have a few more ‘Land Rover’ cam sequences coming up – as a lot of people seem to enjoy the drive and the countryside that we detect in – it is a fairly unique part of the world.

And we have finally coaxed Colleen out in front of the camera, with more to come – I am planning on her doing an entire video in the near future!

There is a possibility that I will be down your way with Garrett Australia in the coming months, probably Ballarat/Bendigo with the ATX, I will let you know and maybe we can meet up and have a yarn.

Congratulations on finding the intact Hamilton Patent bottle – very definitely not an everyday find! The Queensland Defence Forces button was also a great find. According to the entry on that button by J.K. Cossum in his book, Buttons of the Defence Forces in Australia, it was issued from 1903 to 1910 in three sizes (large, medium and small). The manufacturer was Hobson & Son of London, and the buttons came with either a solid back or a drop shank.

In case you have not yet identified the hard rubber (vulcanite?) bottle stopper you found in your bottle dump, that type of stopper is known as a bullet stopper and came from a Lamont Patent bottle. I have found many bullet stoppers over the years (and only two intact Lamonts). One of these stoppers I found recently is apparently quite conductive because it gave a strong response on the ATX – I actually found it with the ATX.

Speaking of the ATX, it is still managing to squeeze out the occasional nugget from the now more reluctant hillside. The latest one is a tiny 0.44-gram piece. The patch has yielded thirty nuggets altogether over a relatively small area (plus numerous interesting artifacts). The Infinium is still in the lead so far in the number of nuggets it has found, but the ATX is rapidly catching up (in a shorter period of time and over ground that has already been hit numerous times with the Infinium). The AT Gold has done very well too on the really tiny pieces, and some larger pieces buried very close to iron trash.

Your weather up north seems to be ideal at this time of the year for getting out on the treasure trail in the beautiful Queensland bush. Thanks for the virtual ride in and out of your search sites. Riding on the Land Rover bullbar was an exciting experience, even though it meant taking one hell of a whipping from all that long grass along the tracks – on second thoughts, I am glad it was really the camera on that bullbar and not me!

It was good to see Colleen delivering the opening and closing comments on the latest video. Keep at it folks, you have a job for ever. We can never have too many videos. And neither can we ever make too many good finds. Hopefully there are many more of each yet to come!